THE GEOGRAPHY-SCHOOL TEACHER
“May I have a few minutes’ conversation with you?” said the fine
stranger to Mr. Pitzer. The schoolmaster bowed stiffly, said
“Certainly, sir,” with some pomp, and came forward. He evidently felt
distrust, not to say hostility; but after ARTICLE THIRTEENTH, he was
bound to set the school an example in politeness.
There was a stricture around Bluebell’s heart while she watched them
talking in low tones near the door. The stranger was pliant, eager
and voluble. Oh, _how_ he did want to get at them all with his stick!
_Would_ Mr. Pitzer give them over to such shame and pain! She reflected
about the black ripe cherries in her reticule, and wished she had
propitiated the good old man by giving them to him at recess. The
school stopped droning, and held its breath, just as the earth does
before a storm, to catch some hint of this colloquy. Mr. Pitzer seemed
more and more mellowed to the man’s proposals. The curves of his stern
face turned upwards; he nodded his head at the end of every sentence;
and finally, leading the way to his high desk, he told the school that
Mr. Runnels had something important to impart to them.
Bluebell shut her eyes, and cowered. Little Joe Hall sat bolt-upright,
and all the big scholars turned around on their seats.
“He’s going to begin with them on this bench,” whispered Tildy to
Bluebell. Mr. Runnels smiled with his teeth and picked up the ferule.
Oh, how earth brightened again as his business unfolded! The faint,
worm-eaten odor of the glass-smooth bench which she clutched, seemed
quainter to Bluebell than ever before. She had heard the Fourth Reader
class sing out the tale of Ginevra; and that chest, “carved by Antony
of Trent,” had just such an indescribable, pungent smell, she felt
certain, as the desk and seats of this school-house. It had always
given her a pleasant sensation; it now added to her joy; her heart
expanded; Mr. Runnels was a very nice man. He did not even hint that a
school ought to be whipped wholesale; Tildy Banks didn’t know anything
about it. His errand was to organize a geography school!
“The method,” said Mr. Runnels, “is altogether new. I have a fine and
complete set of painted maps representing every part of the earth’s
surface, and the exercise of storing the mind with this important
science is not only vastly improving, but novel and delightful. All of
you speak to your parents. The charge is trifling, but the benefit will
be lasting. Everybody is invited free to the organization of the school
to-night at Harris’s chapel west of this school-house. All the boys and
girls and young people of the next district will be there. So don’t
fail to urge your parents to bring you. So many bright eyes,” said Mr.
Runnels with a charming smile--
The school giggled with delight--
--“so many intelligent faces, instructed by a wise, kind master--”
Mr. Pitzer straightened his back and smiled around--
--“must surely take an interest in this beautiful globe on which we
live.”
Mr. Runnels went on and gave them a short lecture on geography. He
told them anecdotes of that ignoramus who did not believe the world
was round and turned on its axis, because, if this were the case, his
father’s mill-pond would spill all its water. The children laughed
uproariously, though few of them had ever thought of the earth except
as an expanse of rocks, trees and robe-like sward, cleft by the Rocky
Fork.
Mr. Pitzer and the geography-teacher parted with ceremonious bows.
The schoolmaster himself made a few cautious remarks to cool his own
enthusiasm; but the next class, which was the grave elders’ arithmetic,
constantly broke out with fractional questions about a different
science.
At last the sun had retreated from the middle of the floor to the very
door-sill. By this token they knew it was high noon. Spellers were laid
straight on the benches around the wall, desk lids were shut down over
their miscellany. Eyes looked expectantly at the master, and all arms
were folded. He uttered one magic word: “Dismissed!”
The school seemed to turn a complete somersault: every child projected
himself like an arrow toward the door, whooping, singing, scampering
and tumbling. Chaos surged to the brown wooden joists. Some nimble
little boys got on the desks and galloped around, while others slipped
out through the windows, which were set sidewise instead of lengthwise
in the log walls, looking like windows that had lain down to dream.
The master, swinging a thick wooden cane, walked to his house which
was near. It might confer distinction to go home to one’s dinner, but
this distinction was not courted even by children who lived in sight.
Could anything be more delightful than that noon hour! Was it only an
hour--that time stuffed full of events as a month? It was the kernel of
all day, at any rate.
Bluebell and Tildy went to their play-house to eat dinner. This summer
residence was formed by a triplet of trees growing so close together
as to form a deep alcove. The floor was carpeted thick with moss which
Bluebell and Tildy changed every few days. They had some gnarly
chairs, which you might have called chunks. Hanging their sun-bonnets
up on scales of bark, they ate their dinners in society, much as
foreign people attend the theatre. For all about them were similar
boxes, or residences, whose occupants visited, and exchanged samples
from each others’ reticules, so what was cooked on one side of the
district was tested on the other side.
Amanda Willey and Perintha Pancost knocked at the bark door of Misses
Garde and Banks, and were bidden to come right in and take chairs.
The residence being already comfortably full, however, and no chairs
visible, they stayed outside and took grass, which was far more
comfortable. Tildy and Perintha swapped a fragment of cherry-pie
and a bit of rather stale cake, while Amanda gave Bluebell a piece
of her cheese for some cherries. These were grave transactions,
each party examining what she received with due caution, excepting
Bluebell, who was willing to fling her repast right and left without
considering whether she got its equivalent or not. Amanda Willey was
a large-faced, smiling girl with very smooth hair cut short around her
neck. Over her ordinary dress she wore a long-sleeved pink sack, and a
pink apron tied about the waist like a grown woman’s. The costume was
most pleasing in Bluebell’s eyes.
“I got a black-silk apron,” she observed, smoothing and patting
Amanda’s drapery. “I’m going to ask Liza to let me wear it to geography
school.”
“I’m going,” exclaimed Perintha Pancost. “The man’s to board at our
house. He had his breakfast there.”
“I ain’t,” said Tildy. “He looks like a raskil. Mebby he’s come down
here to rob folks.”
The blue eyes, brown eyes and hazel eyes around her stood out at
this suggestion. Tildy spoke as if her acquaintance with rascals was
thorough.
“I don’t think that’s very smart of you, Till Banks,” said Perintha,
the hostess of the “raskil.” “My pa and ma don’t have robbers at our
house. He’s the pertiest kind of a man. I like him.”
“So do I,” decided Bluebell with a sigh of relief. Her credulous nature
had been staggered by Matilda. “I’ll take my Noey’s Ark book to read in
g’ography school.”
The boys, having swallowed their dinners, were already shouting at
“Bull in the Pen,” when the girls gathered to take turns at the swing.
How sweet these allotted ten or a dozen rushes through the air were,
with some swift-footed girl running under you to send you up among the
branches! The glee with which you grabbed a leaf, your slow reluctance
in “letting the old cat die,” and another succeed you! The number of
games of “Black Man,” “Poison,” “Base,” which can be crowded into one
noon, has never been computed. Every muscle is strained, the hair
clings to pink foreheads, lungs and hearts work like engines, and the
outdoor world is _too_ sweet to be given up when that rattle of the
master’s ferule against the window sash is supplemented by the stern
call of “Books!”
Drenched in the dew of health, every little body rushed again to the
hard benches. Bluebell told herself that she always liked afternoon,
it seemed so short; and as the sun stooped lower and lower, a lump
of homesickness grew in her for the old weather-stained house, her
father’s return from his daily rounds, and the baby’s tow head and
black eyes which were sure to meet her at the lower bars. Then there
was the spelling-class which crowned every day’s labor. Orthography may
not be the most important element of education, but Bluebell thought
it was, and she had a genius for it. While Tildy swung sleepy legs.
Bluebell mentally counted her own “head-marks,” and speculated on what
the master’s offered prize might be at the end of the term. Classes
succeeded each other, and the sweet dream-producing hum went on, until
Bluebell found herself again going triumphantly “down foot,” having
scored still another head-mark.
Then the roll was called, while reticules, bonnets and caps were slyly
gathered off their pegs and passed from hand to hand, that no one
might keep the others waiting. Joe Hall responded to his name with
a shout, while Amanda Willey’s voice could scarcely be heard; some
pupils answered “half a day;” and for others there was a hurried cry
of “absent,” not always correct, as in the case of John Tegarden, who
shook fist and head many times at Joe Hall for shouting absent to his
name when he was there in the body. Joe ducked his shoulders, and
intimated by lifting his eyebrows, grimacing and nodding, that this was
an oversight on his part. And John was obliged to carry his grievance
outdoors, as he was the first boy on his bench. Dinner-bag and cap in
hand, he stopped at the door to scrape and say “Good-evening!” to the
master, receiving a stately “Good-evening” in return. Thus one by one
they filed out, each child stopping to make that grave salutation,
until the master was free to close the double doors and fasten them
with chain and padlock.
It was more than two hours till sunset; but there were long shadows
in the woods, and an evening coolness was stealing over the beautiful
earth.
The Rocky Fork foaming over boulders or spreading into still pools at
the feet of leaning trees, shaded, variable, but clear as spring water,
cut the home path in two, and was spanned by a foot-log. The wheel of
Hall’s mill turned lazily here, and the mill-race made Bluebell’s brain
unsteady. Not so the shady pebbles in the stream. She sat and watched
them after crossing until Tildy’s voice up the ascent gave her warning
to hurry.
All the country was in that afterglow of sunset when she reached the
pasture-bars behind the house. And of course there was the little
sister at the bars, her curly tow hair dovetailed at the back, her
black eyes spread and both white claws clinging around the wood.
“Some tump’ny’s tum!” she cried.